1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an air conditioner capable of realizing a suitable operation of the air conditioner responding to conditions of the air conditioner setting site or area at an improved energy consumption efficiency.
2. Relevant Art
Generally, a known air conditioner is provided with a cooling cycle, which includes a capacity (power) variable compressor, an outdoor heat exchanger, a pressure reduction device and an indoor heat exchanger, through Which a refrigerant as cooling medium, for example, flows.
In such air conditioner, the operation of these equipments, that is, the flow of the cooling medium, is controlled by a control unit which controls operation (driving) frequency of the capacity variable compressor unit including an inverter. In other wards, an output frequency of the inverter is controlled in accordance with an operation load concerned to temperature data including a temperature difference (i.e., operation load) between an indoor temperature and a set temperature.
For example, one example of such known air conditioner is disposed in Japanese Patent Laid-open (KOKAI) Publication No. SHO 63-58051, in which the maximally allowable operation frequency of the capacity variable compressor, which is variably driven by an inverter, is controlled and set in response to an outdoor temperature detected by an outdoor temperature detector.
According to such air conditioner, the maximally allowable operation frequency, i.e., revolution number, of the compressor corresponding to the air conditioning load can be set based on the outdoor temperature, and hence, it becomes possible to reduce a dead high capacity operation period at a small load condition, thus realizing an improved energy efficiency.
In general, although the load of the air conditioner mainly depends on the outdoor temperature, it may further depend on various other factors or conditions of, for example, place or area for the setting of the air conditioner and the size or scale of a room to which the air conditioner is set, and an indoor humidity or like.
For example, in a case where an air conditioner is set to a wide room, an air conditioning load to be required is of course made large, and on the other hand, in a case where the air conditioner is set to a narrow room, the air conditioning load to be required will become small. Furthermore, in the period when the air conditioner is operated as a cooler, cooling capacity is distributed to sensible heat component reducing the room temperature and latent heat component reducing the indoor (room) humidity. Accordingly, in a condition that the indoor humidity is high, a large cooling capacity (power) is required and, on the contrary, in a condition that the indoor humidity is low, it is sufficient to carry out the air conditioning only at a small cooling capacity (power). In this viewpoint, as in the described known technology, the maximally allowable operating frequency, i.e., revolution number, was set and stored uniformly, as a stationary value, in memory means such as ROM in accordance with the outdoor temperature. According to this known type air conditioner, it was therefore difficult or impossible to treat or control influence of air conditioning load based on a factor other than the outdoor temperature.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 3346616 discloses an air conditioner includes an outdoor unit provided with a memory such as EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) storing control data responding to different, i.e., four, kinds of machines and includes a control circuit selecting the control data based on the machine kind date from an indoor unit to thereby commonly use the outdoor unit responding to different kinds of the machines.
On the other hand, as briefly mentioned above, in the known air conditioner, the indoor humidity is controlled by applying dehumidification function to the air conditioner. However, Known air conditioners are provided with no control unit in which an actually detected indoor humidity is considered for the determination of the operation of the inverter of the capacity variable compressor unit.